It's a different world out there in rural America -- with a passel of struggles
Reviewed by Stephen Lyons
Chemistry and Other Stories, RON RASH. Picador, $13 (240p) ISBN 978-0-312-42508-1
At
first glance, Ron Rash's double-wide world of snapping serpents, wounded
women, expired expectations and Pentecostal penance appears firmly set in
the "scraggly-assed pine trees" and red-dirt landscape of the South. Yet the
culture represented in "Chemistry and Other Stories" resembles that of any
number of rural American settings. Idaho quickly comes to mind in "Last Rite," when a grieving mother, Sarah, says while wryly observing her son's flirtatious young widow, "But pretty didn't last long in these mountains." Sarah has earned that line. Her son Elijah has been murdered for a few bucks in a rugged area that defies political boundaries. She is obsessed with finding Elijah's makeshift grave and hires a surveyor to take her there so she can record in her family Bible the exact place in which her son perished.
" 'North Carolina, Watauga County,' the surveyor said as he took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. 'Granite, yellow jackets, snakes, and briars, that's all that mountain is.' " How wrong he is.
In this blue state of Illinois, from where I write, there are plenty of backwoods folk who, like the Toomey clan in the wonderful "Speckled Trout," have been known to grow a little pot along the north 40. (And note, we have plenty of snakes, several of which are quite venomous.) The story, winner of a 2005 O. Henry Award, was later expanded into Rash's novel "The World Made Straight."
Sixteen-year-old Lanny is a cocky kid who finds a patch of weed while fishing for speckled trout. He grabs a few plants and sells them to Leonard -- a man with a reputation. Then he foolishly goes back for more. Leonard sees where Lanny's youthful bravado will eventually take him.
" 'After the world has its way with you a few years, it'll knock some of the strut out of you. If you live that long.'
" 'I ain't wanting your advice,' Lanny said. 'I just want some beer.' "
The much-abused Montana outback of Richard Ford's collection "Rock Springs" is not that unlike the Southern logging-camp run expertly depicted in Rash's "Pemberton's Bride," the longest story in the collection. The bride is Serena, one of the most ruthless characters ever put in print. When Serena arrives in town, fresh from Boston, she encounters her new husband's former mistress, who is pregnant with Pemberton's baby. The circumstance hardly fazes Serena as she addresses the mistress' knife-wielding father, whom she calls a lucky man.
" 'You'll find no better sire to breed her with.' Serena turned her gaze and words to the daughter on the bench. 'But that's the only one. From now on, what children Pemberton has will be with me.' "
"Not Waving But Drowning," a story that is location neutral, is a terse but powerful piece set in a hospital emergency waiting room. Even though the plot centers on a couple's possible miscarriage and maybe the end of their marriage, a reader will have a difficult time turning away from another couple in the room.
"Across the room a woman holds her front teeth in the palm of her hand. She stares at them as if they were a bad throw of the dice. The man who brought her through the emergency room door leans his cheek against her swollen face. 'You know I love you,' he whispers."
Rash's stories are expertly told with a poet's eye for language. A divorcee runs off with a carnival knife thrower; a father valiantly tries to rescue his son from drug addiction; three elders find an equally ancient sturgeon in a fishing hole; a teenager secretly follows his father up into the mountains to a church of snake handlers. And, yes, many of the characters live in trailers, without broadband.
Rash's portrayals of the South are nothing we haven't read repeatedly before. William Gay is the gold standard for current Southern fiction, and if it's snake handling you are after, find a copy of Dennis Covington's "Salvation on Sand Mountain." Still, a few hours with Rash will remind readers that this nation, despite its seeming prosperity and endless opportunity, still has places off the grid -- and not just in the South -- where it is simply enough to hang on for another day.
Stephen J. Lyons is an Illinois writer.